Pop Of Opinion: Michael Coleman Vs. The Once Upon A Time Fandom

This is hard to write, because as a Oncer and Swan Queen shipper, I don’t want to dwell on what happened with Michael Coleman a few weeks ago.

As someone who spends a lot of time on the internet though, I think it is one of the many examples of why people need to think before they type. So that’s more of why I decided to write about what some people have been calling, “Colegate” or “Happygate.”

For those who don’t know who Michael Coleman is, he plays the dwarf “Happy” on Once Upon a Time.

Several things before you read,

– If you are interested in learning more, go on Tumblr and search Michael Coleman, the screenshots of all the tweets are there. If I linked all of them here, it would be too much. I also have links so ask if you want to know and I can get them to you.

– If you are going to just comment with ship hate, please just close this window right now. I am respectful to other shippers and all I ask is for that same respect to be given to me.

– Before someone tells me I do not know what I’m talking about, I saw the original tweets before they were deleted.

– For those who don’t know, Swan Queen is the “ship,” short for relationship, name for Regina and Emma on the show. It is a non-canon, same-sex pairing, considered the biggest non canon pairing and one of the biggest ships in the show. Basically, there are three groups of shippers you do not want to upset in the fandom because it’s a good chunk of fans and Swan Queen shippers are one of them.

So late one night a few weeks ago (the end of the week of the Duck Dynasty mess), Michael Coleman was on Twitter, tweeting his fans, when someone asked him, “What do you think about swan queen?” Coleman responded that he did not think it was going to happen, the fan responded that “sadly the writers can’t see it” and it all went downhill from there. Basically, everyone got to the point where they got defensive and rude. Fans started attacking Coleman, Coleman was being rude to fans, fans were attacking each other, it was a mess.

If you ask me, Coleman crossed a line. The fan was the one to ask, which to be honest, I’m not sure why she did, but she didn’t deserve the rudeness she got. There was a point where he could stop engaging fans, stop replying, but he didn’t. The things he said were insulting and rude to the fans. He said that it wasn’t a ship, which upset people because it is a ship, it’s just not cannon. When people said he killed the ship, he said “I didn’t kill your ship as it had no life.” He suggested that fans of that ship watch another show and/or pitch a show to ABC. He spoke like he had personal conversations with Jennifer Morrison, who plays Emma Swan, Lana Parrilla, who plays Regina Mills, and Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis, the shows creators, about the swan queen fans being rude. He also made it sound like he had personal conversations with the Kitsis and Horowitz, that he had “inside information” about the ship. When a couple fans tried to explain some LGBTQ fans feel ignored or underrepresented, he ended up comparing LGBTQ people to cars. Throughout all of this he continued to tweet about blocking several dozen people and blocked people at random. He ended up blocking people who were supporting him.

In the morning, after everyone had cooled off, something happened that surprised the fandom more than Coleman’s tweets, it was Adam Horowitz, Lana Parrilla, and Jennifer Morrison tweeting in response. Their response was the first time that many people in the fandom felt supported or acknowledged. To thank the cast, the Swan Queen fans successfully trended, “SQ Loves You” on Twitter.

It’s also worth noting that Coleman’s response to the tweets from Horowtiz, Parrilla, and Morrison, was to say that his tweets were misunderstood and that he did not say what he was accused of saying. He chose not to take responsibility for what was said.

I know I came down really hard on Coleman, I’m is not ignoring the fact that there were some rude fans, but more looking at another celebrity who goofed up on social media.

tl;dr. Happy got a little grumpy and would have been better off being silent.